Secretary of Education–nominee Betsy DeVos has fought to “advance God's Kingdom” by privatizing the public-school system.

January 13, 2017

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Betsy DeVos, whose nomination for secretary of education will be reviewed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Tuesday, has never taught in a classroom. She’s never worked in a school administration, nor in a state education system, nor has she studied pedagogy. She’s never been to public school, and neither have her children. She has no record on higher education, except as an investor in the student-loan industry, which the Department of Education oversees. As Massachusetts Senator (and HELP Committee member) Elizabeth Warren wrote recently, there is “no precedent” for an education secretary with DeVos’s lack of experience in public education.

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What DeVos lacks in expertise she’s made up in money. The daughter of auto-parts magnate Edgar Prince, DeVos married Amway heir Dick DeVos, and together the DeVoses have given some $200 million to conservative organizations and politicians—including nearly $1 million to 21 of the senators who will vote on her nomination—with particular devotion to the cause of privatizing public education. DeVos is not coy about the power of her pockets: She wrote in 1997 that she had decided “to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point…. We do expect some things in return.”

DeVos has been deeply involved in education—as a lobbyist and philanthropist—since the early 1990s, particularly in her home state, Michigan, where she’s pushed to expand charter schools and to implement a voucher system that would funnel public dollars to private schools. DeVos adheres to the idea that free-market competition between schools will produce the best outcome for students. “The more of a ‘marketplace’ we have for education, the more, I think, the better,” she said in a 2015 interview. In another speech that year, she referred to public education as a “dead end,” and said that “government really sucks.”

But DeVos is not simply a free-market ideologue: She has also argued for education reform as a way to advance a Christian worldview. Like her father, DeVos has backed a number of right-wing religious organizations. During a convening of wealthy Christians in 2001, DeVos likened debate about public education to a religious battlefield, and described her work to promote school choice as a crusade to “advance God’s Kingdom” and to secure “greater Kingdom gain.” In the year prior to those remarks, the DeVoses spent more than $2 million backing a school-voucher referendum that would have permitted Michigan parents to pay tuition at religious schools with public money. The measure failed decisively—but soon DeVos may have a national platform from which to attack the separation of church and state. (Donald Trump campaigned on a proposal to spend $20 million on a federal voucher program, though there are several obstacles to that plan.)

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Publicly, DeVos talks less about serving God than about improving quality and equity in education. But there’s little evidence that the reforms she’s fought for have improved Michigan’s schools. In 1993, DeVos helped to advance a bill that opened up Michigan to the charter-school industry. Since then she’s advocated—successfully—to eliminate a cap on the number of charters operating in the state, and to block measures to improve oversight. As a result Michigan now funnels $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to the privately operated schools, which mostly have failed to outperform traditional public schools. In spite of the rapid expansion of charter networks, many children in the poorest neighborhoods of Detroit still live in an education desert.

Eighty percent of the state’s charters are operated for profit, and, according to a 2014 investigation by the DetroitFree Press, have committed a “range of abuses” including misuse of public money. Thanks to Michigan’s lax oversight laws, almost anyone can open a charter school—even operators with track records of failure—and schools that waste state money or demonstrate poor academic performance are hard to shut down. Former Michigan schools superintendent Tom Watkins, a charter advocate himself, told the Free Press, “in a number of cases, people are making a boatload of money, and the kids aren’t getting educated.”

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DeVos’s record is so extreme that her nomination has made some allies of the charter movement queasy, along with teachers’ unions and other public-school advocates. The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association wrote to Senator Warren this week to express the association’s “concern” with DeVos, on account of her recent efforts to kill legislation to provide more oversight over Michigan’s charters. More than 200 national groups comprising the -he Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights sent a separate letter opposing her confirmation because of her efforts to “undermine bedrock American principles of equal opportunity, nondiscrimination and public education itself.” Others, including Senator Warren, are just as concerned about DeVos’s lack of a record on critical issues overseen by the Department of Education—about where she stands on re-privatizing the federal student-loan program, for instance; access to pre-kindergarten; or punitive discipline.

Republicans have rushed DeVos’s nomination along, and may make a complete evaluation impossible. The hearing was postponed after Democrats complained that an ethics review of DeVos’s conflicts of interest had not been completed (at the time of this writing, it still hasn’t been), and Senator Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the HELP committee, said Thursday that she still has “some concerns about missing information” on DeVos’s financial disclosure forms. Meanwhile, according to The New York Times, committee chairman Lamar Alexander has decided to limit fellow committee members’ questions to five minutes. In the end it’s likely that DeVos will be confirmed. For public-school advocates, the only small, good thing to come of her nomination may be a more critical conversation about what has until now been a bipartisan project to privatize public education.

Stop the non-sense. DeVos is being opposed because she's going to continue much needed reform that has been pushed by both Democratic and Republican Presidents alike (e.g. Obama). On the other side are the teachers unions who have failed poor and minority kids for decades, yet continue to offer nothing but excuses.

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Walter Pewensays:

January 18, 2017 at 4:32 pm

You are truly delusional. That is not AT ALL why DeVos is being opposed. Look at her resume.

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David Gurariesays:

January 15, 2017 at 7:28 pm

A perfectly Trumpish choice:
arrogant, ignorant, bigoted crusader, up in arms to slam her "heavenly vision" (Christ as car-sales Dealer) on unrepentant heathen.

I would have replied directly but the link did not work . Obama and his neo-liberal picks have been devastating to many areas not just education. But given the choice between a fake progressive and a fascist. I'll take the phony every time . I was looking forward to battling Hillary for four years . I am not looking forwar to even being in Washington on the 21st to battle Trump.

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Robert Bornemansays:

January 16, 2017 at 7:28 pm

Totally understandable. I was not promoting Trump, however. I was merely hoping that deVos (who I find loathesome) will cripple the power of the Department of Education, which has become far too much of a threat to decent public education in the US. Hillary promised more of the same, and the same was truly awful. I'll settle for the creative destruction of deVos over the self-serving, self-promotion of Randi Weingarten (who gave a false endorsement of the union to Hillary in July of 2015, despite a total lack of membership participation in the process).

Thanks for this useful article. Are you aware of any skeptical Republicans that we might lobby? Democrats, too?

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Robert Bornemansays:

January 13, 2017 at 8:51 pm

Of course, Obama's pick of Arne Duncan was hardly any better: he'd never taught in a classroom either, had virtually no experience of attending public schools and was devoted to the most corrosive element of federal educational policy: standardized testing. If deVos can destroy Duncan's legacy of federalized overreach, more power to her. (I know she's awful, but my hope is that she will simply wreck the department she is in charge of; it has become far more of a liability than a help).

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Robert Bornemansays:

January 14, 2017 at 9:13 am

For those of you who disliked my comment.... why? I've been teaching minority students in public school for nearly 30 years. The kids are great. The policies implemented by Bush and Obama (Duncan) have been toxic. Are you defending Arne Duncan? Do you even know what YOU are downvoting about in my comment? I've been in the educational trenches, and they are brutal. I suspect those of you who dislike my comment are prObama reactionaries who cannot stand any criticism of your idol. You have no idea, but I do. As an educator, Obama (and his appointments like Duncan) was a disaster: promoting standardized testing, corporate data-driven test-focused memorization, and privatized charter schools. You want to champion Duncan? Let's hear it. Give it your best. You know nothing.

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Walter Pewensays:

January 16, 2017 at 6:51 pm

You speak the truth. Do the reading, visit the teachers, and find out what Duncan wrought. Not good at all. I'm hoping to get an elementary credential, and I have been able to see what an unnecessary figure he has been. Right on.

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Karin Eckvallsays:

January 15, 2017 at 8:39 pm

Some Democrats refuse any criticism of their Party or their Leaders.

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Walter Pewensays:

January 13, 2017 at 8:51 pm

De Vos is the equivalent of one of those horrible marine invertebrates that is all poison and barbs. She has enraged the national education community probably like no other person in our history. She is truly sinister, anything but Christian. The interest in the student loan program is exactly where she is at. She does not give a damn. Best thing for the children of this country is for Betsy De Vos to be indicted for the millions she still owes the federal government for the messes caused by her fundamentalist, "Christian" anti-gay PACS. She is sucking off this country and people need to know it.
Maybe death will come sooner rather than later for this latest delivery of evil from Trump.

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Walter Pewensays:

January 13, 2017 at 8:52 pm

From natural causes, like most venomous sea creatures....

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Elna Benoitsays:

January 13, 2017 at 8:16 pm

It is clear that DeVos is yet another in a long lineup of unsuitable, inappropriate, incompetent and inadequate Cabinet candidates. Like the others, this female was picked solely because she represents the exact opposite of what the Cabinet position was organized to do. A Secretary of State to sell us to Russia, a Dept. of Energy that will pollute us into accelerated climate change, an HUD chief that thinks the pyramids were constructed as storage facilities (!) and now a Christian theocrat to destroy Public Education. She wants to further dumb down the citizenry so that they are unable to distinguish superstition from reality. She wants to abolish science and reason and facts in order to brainwash the vulnerable minds into ignorant religious extremism. Furthermore, she is trying to steal taxpayer money away from real education and funnel it to her religious buddies who will profit from running schools that graduate students that are stupider than when they started. And she wants to do it on my dollar - and your dollar. And she wants to sacrifice the futures of my children and your children by keeping them ignorant, and unable to compete with the rest of the world. She wants our education system to churn out people stupid enough to vote for someone like Herr tRumpf. I say we stop calling her DeVos - she is much more like Betsella DeVille.

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Charlotte E Edwardssays:

January 13, 2017 at 6:53 pm

This woman has no business heading the Dept. of Education. If she wants to spread a 'christian' message, maybe she should start with her brother.

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Charles Whitesays:

January 13, 2017 at 7:53 pm

So true! I see ulterior motives behind choosing her and it may concern funneling more taxpayer monies to the private / for profit charter school system. Privatize, privatize, privatize! I have heard this from some of my Republican acquaintances who proclaim private business can always run government commons much better. I remind them how it worked for the Flint water crisis and how the kids in Detroit have mold in their schools and no heat because our Michigan Governor and his cronies cut revenue sharing to cities across the state. I see it hurting our local school district and they are cheating our children to enrich their crony business partners. If they continue this fiasco, it will not end well for the general public. Through the bums out! Please!